Lord Vader insists you replay the classics. This is no fan art or community graphics redress, but a screen grab from the trailer for an upcoming remaster of what I mentioned previously is one of my favorite games ever. Coincidentally I was going through another of my playthroughs of Star Wars: Dark Forces (this time with the aid of the community-developed Force Engine source port) when the announcement for its remaster, produced via assistance of the same community that brought us The Force Engine no less, came through. Thus for my 50th post of this blog it is time to talk about the company making this all possible, one of the dearest friends to us retro gamers in business today.
It is one thing to re-release older games in newer formats; Nightdive Studios is far from alone in such an endeavor. It is also one thing to apply modern-day touch-ups to these retro games, something both the companies officially (i.e. LucasArts for the digital republishing of its classic SCUMM adventures) and fans unofficially (sometimes as simple as graphics filters on emulators) have been doing for decades. Efforts to remake the old classics are also nothing new, but they typically had shortfalls because official works had only enough heart added to make money while fan communities generally lacked the resources for quality work.
Nightdive Studios is different. Sure, they started on digital re-releases of company back catalogs (such as that of MicroProse) but they were founded for the purpose of bringing classics back in new ways that have the bonus of being accessible to present generations of gamers who may never have rediscovered them otherwise. I may be biased because Nightdive's idea of what qualifies as classics worthy of remake happens to parallel my own, but I would also say the results (and reviews) speak for themselves.
Crowning the Kaiser
Long before Stephen Kick conceived Nightdive, Samuel Villarreal had produced a new gaming architecture for the purpose of porting Doom 64 to PC, an effort he'd been pioneering since the early 2000s. About the time game engine and new company came together, this new KEX Engine had jumped a generation to support Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, a defining game in the early N64 FPS library. Nightdive used KEX as the means of remastering Rogue Entertainment's id Tech 1 RPG Strife, and in the decade since KEX has grown to support a staggering range of games originally powered by such a diversity of architectures including pre-id Tech 1 (Rise of the Triad), Acclaim's N64 shooters (Shadow Man & the Turok series), Ken Silverman's Build Engine (Blood), and in 2023 the full id Tech 2 family with the launch of a remastered and expanded Quake II joining its prequel that got the same treatment 2 years ago.
Now that the LucasArts-exclusive Jedi Engine is joining that list, there appears to be no limit to the KEX Engine's technical potential in adapting the source coding (or rebuilding from scratch which occurred for Strife Veteran Edition) of the great game engines that defined the 90s. I said technical and not legal: I'm not counting on seeing anything from the protective coffers of Valve or Epic getting the KEX remaster treatment but one never knows. In any case, perhaps the most amazing thing of all is that while all these enhanced re-releases gain 21st century quality-of-life improvements in their controls and graphics (audio is generally left unmolested), it's telling how much they still feel like the originals. Too often fans have rejected re-releases because the enhancement process stole something out of the original experience, but Nightdive is the exception. Doubtless that is because they are fans of these games themselves and respect what made them classics in the first place. Another amazing thing is KEX Engine's portability; for all it offers it should've been called Retro Engine, but that name was already taken by Christian Whitehead's contributions to Sonic the Hedgehog. While originally PC exclusives in Nightdive's early catalog such as Strife and Blood remained available only on home computer, most everything powered by KEX since can be found on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, their 9th generation successors, plus Nintendo Switch. Not only were Turok and PowerSlave (the Sega Saturn and original PlayStation edition powered by Lobotomy Software's Slavedriver engine was used as basis for PowerSlave Exhumed and not the PC-exclusive Build engine variant) originally console games, there were also special versions of id Tech games to 5th generation consoles whose content (from that which appeared on N64 at least) got preserved in the KEX transition. Even counting the newer Classic Doom ports to the Unity architecture, these shooters that were first made for keyboard and mouse have always had a gamepad side and it's nice to see that respected along with reach to a wider audience. But of course, these are not simple ports with window dressing. Beginning with Strife Veteran Edition a staple of Nightdive games has been the addition of exclusive new content, often added by the official development teams themselves (the new episodes of Quake I & II are by MachineGames, developers of the present-running Wolfenstein series). Those who want a more original experience aren't denied it, as shown by the choice of soundtracks in Turok.
Add all that up, and Nightdive Studios is that one company who understands what makes retro gaming so appealing and how to bring that appeal to new generations. The future may yet be more interesting since as of several months ago Nightdive became part of Atari, the French conglomerate who adopted the pioneering arcade and console company's name after acquiring rights thereof from their purchase of Hasbro Interactive (the same who happened to own MicroProse at the time). Other prominent members of that family include the former GT Interactive (commercial publisher of many shareware studio classics starting with Doom II) and online database MobyGames. Since this Atari regained its property claims of these previously-held franchises after they were first republished by Tommo back in 2013 (partnered with Nightdive, which explains how they got involved in the MicroProse classics) along with others made by MicroProse-owned subsidiaries as well as those of another multi-genre simulation company, Accolade (look for coverage of them on a future blog post), the circle is now complete once again.